


Tamed in This Equation

by Catchclaw



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, Keith Used to Be a Bad Bad Man, M/M, Weird Mix of 18th Century and Computers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 12:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17508545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: They find the man in the tall grass just beyond the house gates.





	Tamed in This Equation

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Soldier/nurse. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

They find the man in the tall grass just beyond the house gates. He’s battered and his clothes--his uniform--is torn, his face a mass of blood and of bruise. Later, Keith will be angry that they moved him on their own, without calling for help; it’s a wonder they hadn’t injured the man even further in their haste. But when the call comes, when his friends’ shouts in the foyer rouse him, when he and Lance tumble in the dark from their bed and follow the servant’s bobbing candle down the stairs and into the parlor, his first thought is one of pure fear.

“How did he get so close to the house?” he demands. “Pidge, I thought you said the fighting was miles away.”

Pidge barely glances back at him, her hands busy over her slim handheld diagnostic. “It is. And the line’s moving back everyday. Another movement or so and we’ll have them driven back to the sea.”

“So what the fuck is this guy doing dying on our property?” Lance asks sleepily.

“Does that really matter right now?” Hunk is hovering at the end of the settee, his face twisted in worry. “Maybe we should focus on keeping him, you know, _alive_. Then you can ask him.”

“But--!”

Lance threads an arm through his and kisses his shoulder. Tips his temple against Keith’s. “Babe, relax. Once it’s light, you can take the skimmer over the perimeter and check for holes in the fence.”

He can feel the worried curl of his spine relax. “Yeah? That’s a good idea.”

“That’s me, Mr. Good Idea. I’m full of them.” A sigh. “Now shut up and let Pidge save this dude’s life.”

It takes until nearly daybreak, the room filled with a tension, an unbending silence, that even a newly-stoked hearth and a round of hot toddies can’t shake.

“What if he dies?” Keith murmurs from the depths of the chair where Lance has pulled him. “They’ll come looking for him, you know. What will we do then?”

“Nah,” Lance says against his throat. “What you should really be worried about is what we do if he lives.”

“If?” Pidge shakes her head, looks up from her work with a grin. “Oh, ye of little faith. I think you mean _when_.”

They gather around him, peer down at the hulking figure, sleeping now, his breathing deep and shaky, but even. He’s still a mess--a riot of blood and tattered clothes--but his wounds are healing, both the ones they can see and the ones his body’s hiding within.

“Yep, she’s a genius,” Hunk burbles, bouncing happily on his heels. “My best friend’s a genius.”

“How long until he can walk again?” Keith asks, meaning: _how soon can we get him to leave?_

“I have no idea. A phoeb, maybe?” Pidge pushes up her glasses. “Whatever he was hit with took a lot out of him, and the kind of damage it did, it’s not something I’ve ever seen.”

“Is that what took off his arm?”

“Oh, no. No. It was cut off clean years ago.” She holds up the diagnostic and taps at the screen. “See? Look at all that scar tissue. He hasn’t had that arm for a long time.”

“Cool,” Lance says, “so we have a one-armed soldier from the wrong side of the war bleeding out all over our couch.”

“He’s not bleeding out, Lance, I--”

Lance groaned and tugs his hand free of Keith’s. Made a face like a spoiled kid. “Yeah, yeah," he said, "you saved him, Pidge, I got it. Can I go back to bed now? This guy’s cost me enough fucking sleep.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Hunk says a split second after the door slams. “You haven’t turned him into that much of a grandpa, have you?”

“He’s fine,” Keith says absently. He reaches down and brushes the man’s matted hair from his face. It’s thick with dirt and dried blood; the few strands free of filth look white in the fire light, almost luminescent. “Been a long time since he couldn’t get a straight eight, you know? I’ve let him get soft.”

“Soft? Lance?” Hunk snorts. “Nah, I don’t think so. If anybody’s been tamed in this equation, Keith, it’s you.”

“Hunk,” Pidge says quietly. “Don’t.”

Hunk ignores her. “I mean, the Keith I used to know, there’s no way he wouldn’t have been out there with pitchforks and torches looking for a breach the second he got a whiff of this guy. I’m surprised you even let us bring him in here.”

“Not like I had a choice.” Keith looks up, sharp. His hand’s still on the man’s face. “I don’t remember you asking permission.”

“See, exactly. Exactly! There was a time when you’d have like broken multiple limbs because of that. Or at least shouted a lot.”

“Hunk!” Pidge says. “Shut. Up.”

“What? What’d I say? Pidge, come on, I only meant that--”

“It’s fine,” Keith says. It isn’t, but he’s too tired to be angry, too curious about the strange events of the night to give his anger any oxygen. “You guys should get some rest, huh? Your rooms are all ready. Go on. Get some sleep.”

“What about you?” Pidge squeezes his shoulder. “You look like you’re about to tip over.”

“I’m fine. Find Coran and ask him to come in here, would you? He can keep an eye on our friend here for now.”

“You’re sure?”

He turns and gives her a nod, tosses one Hunk’s way, too: _we’re cool_. “Yeah. Thanks, you guys.”

The man shifts a little, a tiny, spiked sound of pain falling from his lips, and Keith spreads his fingers, presses his palm against the man’s forehead.

“Ask Coran to bring the med-kit with him, huh? And some hot water. He needs to be cleaned up.”

“Sure,” Pidge says. Another squeeze. “We’ll see you in a few hours, all right? Tell Coran to give me a shout if--”

“I will. I promise.”

In a moment, they’re alone, he and the wounded man.

“You probably have a thousand questions,” Keith says. “God knows I do.” He feels a flash of the old steel in him, the dusty memories of what it’d meant once to fight. Ten years, he thought; hell. Has it really been that long? “You need to hurry up and heal so we can both find out what we want.”

The man moves again, more this time. He seems uneasy; less pained than unsettled, but he doesn’t turn his head, doesn’t shake free of Keith’s hand.

“You don’t like that idea, huh? Well, tough. That’s gonna be the price of your life, probably. Not such a bad one to pay, is it? A few answers and you get to live.” He cups the man’s cheek and strokes a thumb through the blood, feels the sharp lines of the bone. “Seems fair to me.”

Dry lips part and the man whispers something, a sound Keith can see but not hear.

“What?” There’s a streak of vicious in his mouth, an old language he’d thought he’d forgotten. Would you have rather we left you out there to die? The wolves aren’t kind this time of year, you know.”

They part again, try again: “Keith.”

He startles. Does his best not to show it. “What did you say?”

“Keith. That’s your name, isn’t it? I heard them call you it.”

“Your ears aren’t injured at least.” A sharp tone to shelter his fear. “That’s the only part of you, it looks like.”

The man’s eyes open, like cellar doors long locked and closed, and it’s only when they do that Keith realizes how close they are; realizes that he’s fallen to his knees and he’s leaning over the man, one palm still curved around that bruised, battered face. “Don’t you remember me?” the man says, a dry wind in the desert. “Has it been so long that you do not?”

“I don’t know you.”

“Not now. You did once.” A tattered smile. “Though much of me has changed, you have not, Keith. You seem exactly the same.”

There is a curl of pain in his gut, a flutter in his chest he can’t name, does not want to claim as his own. This man knows him. This _enemy_ knows him. How is that possible? It can’t be true. He wasn’t on the front lines the last time this war raged; he was safe and warm in the capital, safe and warm and busy with the important work of interrogation, of extracting information from those foolish enough not to die when they had the chance but to be taken, captured, swept back to the capital wherein they might prove their utility one last time before death. Every enemy, then, that he’s ever met has been in tight quarters like this, face to face and stone to stone and none of those that he’d interrogated had ever walked out of the capital alive, except...

Except one.

A moment of weakness, that man had been. A temporary madness. It was the only time he’d ever believed what a prisoner had told him, the only time he’d felt pity, the only time he’d let himself--

Keith’s heart runs cold. It turns over. It bolts as if Keith had put his spurs to it and races off in a ragged, awful stagger.

It can’t be. This man, he couldn’t be--not after all this time! And why, of all the places in the world, would he try and die in the fields outside of Keith’s house, his very own property, a decade and half a world away? No. _No_. It couldn’t be.

“No,” Keith says, the word one last protection. “You don’t know me. You can’t.”

The man turns his face to Keith’s palm and nuzzles it, breathes unsteady against his skin. “But I do,” he whispers. “I do, I do. My name is Shiro, _shin'ainaru_ , and you know me, too.”


End file.
